We Need to Move on From Self-Care to Something Outside of Capitalism

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From The Guardian: “While looking after yourself is great, self-care is still an idea rooted in a neoliberal tradition of looking out for ourselves, rather than seeing ourselves, our health and our fates as inextricably linked to our fellow human beings.

Wouldn’t it be great if this decade we took the self out of self-care and strived instead for communal care?

Self-care is saying ‘I need to look after me’, while collective self-care is saying ‘we need to look after each other’ (in the words of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius: ‘What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.’)

Collective care exists outside the market and can’t be captured by capitalism, turned into a product that we buy back and, by definition of its price, excludes many from participating in it.”

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1 COMMENT

  1. Psychology/psychiatry taught self care. It was the new family structure, the crap jobs that we strive for, the many activities, yoga workouts, texting, realization that structures we believed in were full of lies, including medical care… soon the stress of it all combined with the marketing of mental health and voila, self care.
    Self care is also closely linked to therapy.
    I think we get so swallowed up by mental info and then whamo, you turn 80 and say to yourself, wtf was that?
    It’s been a mental ride for sure.